Raise your mower for healthier lawns and lakes
One step that stimulates root growth, reduces watering, helps control weeds, and reduces lawn maintenance is to raise your mower blade. Longer grass blades above ground translate to deeper roots beneath. This helps the plants absorb more soil moisture and nutrients, protecting it from stress and drought. Taller grass also shades the soil, reducing moisture loss and cutting back on light that weeds like crabgrass need to germinate. The result is a healthier lawn with less watering, pesticides, fertilizer, and work. Whether cutting the lawn long or short, it is important to remember to direct clippings away from streets and other hard surfaces where rain washes them through sewers directly into lakes and wetlands. Corcoran has very few storm sewers, but many of our drainage ditches enter into our creeks, which ultimately run into our rivers and lakes. Grass clippings contain phosphorus, the nutrient that promotes problem algae growth in lakes, ponds, and wetlands.

Protect our water
Seeking to improve the water quality of Minnesota's lakes and waterways, state legislators passed a law in 2005 that requires most lawn fertilizers used in Minnesota to be phosphorus-free. While phosphorus is necessary to grow healthy lawns, soils in many parts of Minnesota already have more than enough of it. When phosphorus is applied where it is not needed, it can move into nearby waterways where it encourages the growth of algae. Too much algae, in turn, lowers oxygen levels and harms fish populations.For more information about lawn care and the phosphorus fertilizer law, visit the Minnesota Department of Agriculture website at webinfo@mda.state.mn.us.

Where Can I Find Other Environmental Links?
Listed below are some helpful links for a clean environment